browser

There are plenty of browsers out there today that web users can choose from including the old standby Internet Explorer and the newer Chrome and Firefox browsers among others. If none of those browsers is really your cup of tea, a new offering is coming down the pipes to add another contender to the field. The new browser is called Vivaldi and it is from a team that includes the former CEO of Opera.

After doing a little cleaning up of unqualified services, WhatsApp is now coming to the desktop. A long-desired feature for fans, WhatsApp is now available on the browser — but not any browser. For now, Chrome is the only browser supported, and you’ll need the app to log-in. With a scan of the QR code, you can start chatting on the desktop, and leave your phone on the desk next to you. Unless you’re on iOS — the desktop doesn’t support that, either.

Spartan was shown off at Microsoft’s event today, and we now know how Microsoft envisions the browser. After acknowledging that there was indeed something called Project Spartan, we were told all the fun things Spartan will bring us. We will get the ability to mark-up those marked-down webpages, and and migrate efficiently between touch and keyboard interactions. There is also a new reading list, and Cortana is at your side, as always. Rather than re-build the browser, Microsoft is taking the better parts on others and combining them into one.

Mozilla has just rolled out version 35 of the popular Firefox web browser and it is bringing in a handful of new features. Highlighting this release, however, is something that they have been working on for quite a long time now. Leveraging the power of what is called WebRTC (Real Time Communications), Firefox Hello lets users create and share video chats without the hassles of third party accounts, services, or plugins. All you need is a Firefox browser, and sometimes you don't even need that.

CES 2015 is starting to wind down, but before we warm up the engines for MWC next month, Microsoft might have a thing or two to say first. The consumer preview of Windows 10 is due later this month, and that latest version of the OS may also bring with it a slightly different web browsing experience. Leaked partial screenshots of that new-old browser, simply called "Spartan", are making rounds over the Internet, bringing mixed emotions and hope of a slightly redesigned Microsoft web browser.

The gaming industry is often criticized for being poor curators of their heritage. Well, not anymore. At least hopefully not anymore. Various efforts have popped up to not only preserve these age old titles but also make them available to a generation of gamers who would otherwise have no other way to experience these games. Last November, it was old school arcade games that went up on the Internet Archive. Now it's the turn of hundreds and hundreds of MS-DOS games, around 2,300 in all.

Over the past decade, the decline in popularity of Internet Explorer took place in a big way because of the rise of competition. The last big release of Internet Explorer was with Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7. Internet Explorer 6 is dead, at long last, but the ill effects of this extremely buggy browser are still in full effect today. Is it time for Microsoft to ditch the brand and move on? A tip earlier today suggested that Microsoft's new browser brand may be called Spartan - another Halo brand like Cortana for a full Halo family.

Internet Explorer is hardly the most loved of browsers, and Microsoft is reportedly planning a drastic fix with a new browser codenamed Spartan tipped to launch alongside Windows 10. Intended to be more lightweight and flexible - borrowing a look and feel more akin to Google's Chrome or Mozilla's Firefox - than previous Microsoft web browsers, Spartan would stick with Microsoft's existing engine technologies under the hood, but wrap them up in such a way that the company's engineers hope users forget whatever bad experiences they may have had with legacy software such as IE6.

Tor, the secure browser that leaves your traffic and identity as anonymous as you like, is having some difficulty. A cluster of servers in the Netherlands has been taken offline, and it’s not immediately clear why. It’s also not known if it was the work of law enforcement, or some rogue agency. It could also be a single black-hat hacker who is tying to disrupt service. Thomas White, who runs a large portion of exit nodes for Tor, says they’ve lost “all servers” under that particular ISP.

Mozilla wants to make searching for the things you need faster on Firefox, and so to facilitate that the company will be introducing an update sometime in the future that brings with it a new search interface. With this new search, users are able to type a keyword into the search field, then choose a specific preset search engine or website on which they want to view the result, among them being sites like Wikipedia and Google. This follows news that Yahoo will be the browser's new default search option.

Mozilla has announced a new partnership with Yahoo, and under it Firefox will be dropping Google from its long-standing position as default search engine. Soon, users in the US will be seeing a sleek version of Yahoo as their browser's default search option, something that is said to represent Yahoo's "most significant partnership" over the last half decade. If all goes as planned, Mozilla will be launching the new offering some time next month. According to Yahoo, this new search experience will be coming to US users first.

A new version of Opera Mini is available for users of iOS devices that promises to make loading video faster and reduce the amount of buffering you have to sit through. The new version is called Opera Mini 9 with video boost. Opera also says that the browser will help you reduce data usage, which is great for people who are on a data limited account.